A four day event for hundreds of Muslims at a school in North Yorkshire has been called off at the 11th hour.
Approximately 700 Muslims from all over the United Kingdom had been anticipated to attend ‘Islamia Village’ over the Bank Holiday weekend.
It was to be held at the Thorpe Underwood Estate, home of Queen Ethelburga’s College, between York and Boroughbridge.
However, an estate spokesman said there had been difficulties in accommodating some of the main speakers and the Trustees had had no option but to cancel the event.
They can dress the cancellation of the event up exactly how they like, but it is well known that vociferous protests by various nationalist groups are the real reason the event was called off.
Numerous telephone calls were made and a host of emails were sent to the owners of the school telling them that if the event did go ahead it would be met head on by a full scale demonstration by concerned nationalists.
Several of the speakers were understood to have attracted controversy over the years over comments they were reported to have made about matters such as Islam and Western values,
Murtaza Khan, who has described homosexuality as an “abominable action which goes against humanity” and stated that the correct punishment for such acts is death.
Also scheduled to speak was Assim Al-Hakeem who holds similar hostile views to homosexuality. His website also calls for ‘apostates’, those who abandon a religion, to be killed.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Assim Al-Hakeem was banned from three University campuses earlier this year.
Another speaker was Abu Usamah At-Thahabi, who has also stated that the punishment for homosexuality should be death.
Hate seems to run through much of his preaching’s and he has also called for Muslims who renounce their religion to be killed “in the Islamic state”.
On non-Muslims he has said: “We hate the people of the kufr (non-Muslims). We hate the kuffar.”
Finally there is Abuz Zubair, who suggests that those Muslims who believe in evolution should be killed.
Responding to a Muslim who articulated support for evolution, Abuz Zubair said “the call to evolution is a call to kufr and apostasy”.
He went on to quote a fatwa of Ibnal-Uthaymeen which stated that someone who teaches evolution “should be stopped by any means necessary even if it means his execution” and that if teaching continues “this person should be executed because he is an apostate and apostates are executed”.